eating 족발

so after work on Friday I ran down to homeplus to grab a few essentials (tp and makkeoli) and then went for a long walk up to the base of Apsan where I often walk after work. It's about 30-40 minutes each way (depending on my pace/how far up I go) and a great walk at night. On my way back I stopped off at a few vendors to pick up some veggies and some meat. Well an old guy was selling an undisclosed meat that smelled great and was down to 7000 won from the usual 10,000 (so about $6.50 down from $9.50) so I bought it, took it home and tried some. It was chewy, really chewy.... almost rubbery. It tasted like pork I used to get in Hong Kong and it's about the most delicious thing I ate while there so I began eating it up.

It was Chokbal.

Now Korean in one of those languages where every word has more than one meaning and there is more than one word for everything, due to the influx of Chinese words in classical times, so for example "배" can mean boat, stomach, pear or behind depending on context and the hanja. Therefore I ignored the "발" as it must have more meanings than "foot".

Well it still might but I'll have to look it up later. I had picked up a piece of meat which was unmistakably a pig's hoof (Koreans don't have the same need to hide what their meat is through selective cutting, and they eat all of it). In fact, "족" is the Chinese work for foot, so the dish translates as foot foot. In fact the full name of this dish was : 서울왕족발 or Seoul King foot foot.

Ack, ewwww. Pigs feet! That's gross, that's awful that's....... well really quite delicious and actually very healthy. While I had never planned to eat pigs feet they are actually really good and I'm glad I accidentally did. While it isn't quite fried spider or silk worm larvae on the list of weird stuff I've eaten it's a fun story.